Phil Schiller Quits Instagram Over Android

When the month of April began, life was still wonderful for lovers of Instagram. The company had not yet been bought by Facebook. More importantly, there was no Android version.

When Instagram - one of the iPhone's most popular photography apps since its launch in 2010 - made its long-awaited jump to the Android platform, there was a small but vocal segment of the app's iPhone user base that was not happy at all. These folks took to Twitter to complain - in terms that were often borderline racist - about how far Instagram had sunk in the (at the time) twenty-four hours since the app hit Android.

Now it looks like the Android Instagram hate isn't just confined to the nut jobs on Twitter. According to 9to5Mac, no less a personage than Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President at Apple, deleted his Instagram account sometime after the Android launch. When someone who had presumably been following Schiller on Instagram noticed that his account was gone, they sent him a message via Twitter asking why. His response was that when Instagram went to Android it "jumped the shark."

Now, Schiller's statement is a far cry from the loons who were complaining that "Instagram just turned into the projects," by moving to Android. Nevertheless, the basic sentiment is pretty much the same. The idea appears to be that there was something inherently iPhone-y about Instagram, and that by no longer being an iPhone only app, Instagram had somehow lost something special. Now, I've been an iPhone user since 2008 and the iPhone 3G, and I've been an Instagram user since summer of 2010. That being said, it's hard for me to see all this vitriol about Instagram coming to Android as anything other than pure nonsense, wherever it's coming from. The fact is that Android is one of the two largest smartphone platforms in the world. It would have been a stupid business move for Instagram not to make the jumpt to Android.

What do you think? Did Instagram "jump the shark" by adding an Android app? Let us know what you think int he comments.